The amazing thing is how this is a chapter in the 1965 war where chroniclers of both sides agree. Both say the operation was a complete rout.
Continuing my series of notes on some of the more interesting aspects of the 1965 war with Pakistan in its 50th anniversary year, let me take you back to one of the most remarkable, but short-lived and relatively less talked about, events of that war.
It was the audacious para-commando attack by Pakistan with the intention of crippling three of the Indian Air Force's (IAF) most crucial and largest airbases in Punjab: Pathankot, Halwara (near Ludhiana) and Adampur (near Jalandhar).
This was on the night between 6 and 7 September. On 6 September, the Pakistan Air Force (PAF) carried out rather successful raids on those bases, causing large-scale destruction at Pathankot. Combined with an early setback over Chhamb, the loss of four Vampires, this was...

Because it’s the only war it didn’t lose to India. It was a stalemate, with both tired sides short of firepower, ideas and nerve.
Some lines are so smart and so durable that even their authorship becomes contested. One such is: In war, truth is the first casualty. When The Guardian asked this question, readers gave credit for this to many over the centuries, going backwards, from isolationist American Senator Hiram Warren Johnson (1918) to Rudyard Kipling to Sun Tzu and, inevitably, Ernest Hemingway was thrown in as well.
Some of us non-literary types were exposed to this brilliant truism by Phillip Knightley’s fine book 'The First Casualty'. But the copyright on this should belong to Greek dramatist Aeschylus (525-456 BC), well before even Alexander the Great.
Other rules follow. History, by and large, is written from the point of view of the victor. The loser, over time, invents alibis. But it gets complicated...

Arjan Singh had an imposing personality, coupled with a genial and relaxed demeanour toward both juniors and colleagues.
How do you write about a legend who almost scored a century – not in runs, but in the number of years as the vanguard of the Indian Air Force?
Marshal of the Indian Air Force Arjan Singh was an aviator who started his operational flying career in the stark and rough terrain of the North-West Frontier Province in the 1930s. In the early 1940s, he daringly commanded a squadron of Hurricanes in the Burma theatre; led the IAF through the 1965 war with Pakistan; retired at 50 and then assumed the role of a mentor for three generations of IAF officers.
Along the way, he donned the garb of a diplomat, turned into a philanthropist by setting up a fund for the needy in the service by selling his ancestral land, and...